“Contactless multi-interface cards have proven to be so successful inthe payments market that we are now seeing demand across sectors like gift andloyalty,” comments Paul Underwood, Managing Director at Thames. “Thisinvestment allows us to meet this increasing demand and puts us at theforefront of RFID contactless card personalisation. We can now personaliseevery interface of a card, at high-speed and in one pass, delivering greaterefficiency for us and a faster service for our customers.”

Cards with more than one interface – such as contact-based chip,contactless, magnetic stripe and barcode – offer flexibility and conveniencefor consumers, encouraging greater usage and engagement for brands.

Two new Atlantic Zeiser Persomaster machines offer a high-speed drop ondemand (DoD) card personalisation system for all types of plastic card. Theystreamline and expedite the card production process by encoding data on themagnetic stripe, contact chip and contactless interface, printing informationonto both sides of the card, attaching scratch labels and performingcamera-automated verification in a single pass, on one machine.

Further investment has also been made in an AutoFeeds Cartan Card Systemencapsulation machine to support card-based use cases like loyalty andmembership. The equipment is capable of encapsulating and punching shaped cardsor keyfobs, again, in a single pass.

Three Entrust Datacard MX6100 Card Issuance Systems will also improvecard personalisation capacity and services for the banking market by optimisingsmart card personalisation and delivering edge-to-edge printing and moreefficient insertion of cards and carriers into envelopes.

“These investments come on the back of a big year for the company,”concludes Paul. “Financial success gave us the confidence to invest, wecompleted a phase of recruitment to our senior team and have been working tointroduce new systems to maximise efficiency and customer service. Thesemachines build on that work and position Thames to capitalise on the latesttechnologies and market opportunities.”

Read more about Thames Card Technology’s additions to its senior management teamand new systems, to enable further growth and deliver better and expandedservices to customers.